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“Kay, you are a liability.”
He watched reluctantly as she clambered across the roof of one building to the next, ready to catch her at a moment’s notice. He wondered why she couldn’t have just climbed down and walked over to him on the ground like a regular person.
“ND, I do this for a living!” She chuckled, pausing to take a few steadying breaths.
“You just like making things more difficult.” He muttered, inwardly grimacing as she jumped to the next building.
And overwhelming my systems with unnecessary alerts.
As a cluster of new notifications flickered across his diagnostics, minor inconveniences, nothing drastic, but enough to register as unnecessary… noise, he disregarded them for now. He could analyze the logs later, when the time was right. Right now, she was all he could focus on. Her safety was his mission, something unregistered but still something he couldn’t ignore, no matter how hard he tried to rationalize it.
“You know you love me.” She teased over her shoulder, winded, fingers dancing on the beam she held, planning out her next moves.
She shuffled along the ledge before looking down at ND-5, flashing one of those genuine smiles that she saved for him. His cooling fans began overclocking at her warmth, before nearly short-circuiting as he witnessed her jump from the ledge into his unsuspecting arms. He sighed as she nuzzled up against his neck struts.
“...Unfortunately.”
As she pulled away, he thought of all the other places he could have drifted off to, if not for her. All the other things he could be doing at this moment. Probably scrounging around in a cantina, trying to get by as a lone droid, or carrying out whatever task his employer requested of him. But as his photoreceptors gazed into Kay's hazel eyes, he found that he couldn’t look away. As if trying to find something in her that might explain what it was he had just become aware of, but didn’t fully understand. He realized then, there was nowhere else he would rather be than by her side. Something about her, just felt, right.
He was built for efficiency, to hunt and destroy, and to follow orders, but nothing could have prepared him for what he did next. He nestled himself up against her neck, eliciting giggles from her. A low, chuffing hum escaped him in response, an unfamiliar noise but one that they had come to associate with as his way of laughing. While still strange to him, it was an action that felt more genuine than anything he had ever experienced, something he had grown to welcome, something that he was beginning to feel. Something that only came when he was around her.
As he rested his forehead against hers, he welcomed the calm that came with it. A peace he had yet to encounter, one he didn’t know was possible for something, someone, like him.
Not long ago, all of this would have meant going against his protocol, a directive that once defined him, but now that no longer existed. This was something new, something that he couldn’t explain or understand and for once, he didn’t have the answers. But now, the pull to duty no longer stopped him in his pursuit of exploring what it was he was… feeling. He felt drawn to it. To her. He wanted to know more. He wanted to explore this new sensation with her, if she would allow him to stay by her side.
For once in his life, in a universe that had never given him a choice, he felt autonomy. With him standing here, being able to catch her, embrace her, it felt like a decision that he wholeheartedly made for himself.